LOS ANGELES -- It was the kind of game you never want to think about again, the kind you banish to the dark corner of your brain with the Little League strikeouts and the teenage humiliations and the dreams of being on a stage in your underwear. And why not? It wasn't a heartbreaking, close loss. It wasn't an unthinkable first-round upset. There were no decisions to second-guess, no key moments to replay, no important lessons to be learned.
The UCLA Bruins trailed 24-0 before they got their first bucket. They made 19 of their 71 total shots. They scored seven points in the first half, full stop. What's the use dwelling on that? Yeah, it was embarrassing. Oh well. Life goes on.
UCLA coach Steve Alford spent most of the past 350 days applying this Jedi mind trick to a 83-44 loss to No. 1 Kentucky last December. He probably could have gone on forever, save one inconvenient fact: It was December again, and No. 1-ranked Kentucky Wildcats were on the schedule, and until it was over there would be no way to avoid hearing about a bad day that he and his players had long since compartmentalized.
"Very seldom did we talk about it," Alford said. "We showed [our players] no tape. The only thing I talked to them about was I thought, last year … we came out on our heels. We were soft. We were scared. We played like we were scared. And then all of a sudden it's 24-0 and there's no game.
"So you if we're going to play this game, [play it]. If you want me to cancel, I'll cancel it. But if you want to play it, we've got to come to fight."
On Thursday night, UCLA did much more than that. It upset a No. 1 team for the first time since 2003 -- and in a comprehensive, occasionally dominant 87-77 performance.
"We heard a lot this week about trying to keep it competitive," Bryce Alford said with a wry smile. "So I'm glad we did that."
The pregame talk about UCLA trying to avoid another embarrassment couldn't have been more wrong. The Bruins took a 4-2 advantage with 18 minutes, 20 seconds left to play; they never surrendered the lead again. They scored 1.3 points per possession against a defense that had allowed .886 in its seven previous games, turned the ball over just 10 times against UK's consistent full-court pressure, and shot 53 percent from the field on a steady diet of open looks, interior finishes and tidy drives.
Thomas Welsh outworked UK's big men en route to 21 points and 11 rebounds. Tony Parker was too strong around the rim. UCLA got contributions from everywhere, and it executed Steve Alford's game plan -- to pack in zone and man-to-man defense, ask Kentucky to make perimeter shots, and work hard enough around the rim to not yield easy second chances and lobs -- to utter perfection.
Somehow, UCLA made taking down the Wildcats look easy.
"I want everybody to understand: I got outcoached, we got outplayed," Kentucky's John Calipari said. "Their execution, their hustle, their toughness, there was not one area that they didn’t beat us in.”
UCLA's performance was good enough to push Kentucky to harsh self-appraisals before the game was even over. At one point, in a timeout, sophomore guard Tyler Ulis shoved Skal Labissiere, chastising the star freshman for failing to hustle after a loose ball. Afterward, Calipari said Labissiere would be fine long-term, but that he had "no options" but to toughen up soon.
The night didn't go much better for the Wildcats' veterans: Center Marcus Lee was lost in the opening minutes to an undisclosed head injury. He did not return. Forward Alex Poythress had one of the worst, least comfortable games of his four-year career, including his unfortunate role as the victim of UCLA freshman Prince Ali's momentum-sealing, second-half dunk.
That play sparked an already fired-up crowd full of celebrities and former players, which, at the modern-day UCLA, is a victory unto itself. The Bruins have had an unsteady relationship with their fans in recent seasons, and early 2015-16 attendance figures have been the subject of frequent derision. In November, Arizona coach Sean Miller spent a portion of a news conference only barely hiding his critique of the Pauley Pavilion environment.
The contrast UCLA provided in its play, from its earlier losses to Monmouth, Wake Forest and Kansas, was reflected in Thursday's sold-out crowd.
"Prince dunks on somebody, and I'm trying to look at Prince, and in the background I see Baron Davis just going absolutely nuts," Bryce Alford said. "There's not too many places you can have that."
Earlier, his father was open about his hope that the victory over Kentucky propels more consistent attendance at Pauley. Perhaps it will. Maybe Thursday was a brief, joyous aberration.
Then again, if there was any lesson to be learned in Los Angeles on Thursday, it's that aberrations, no matter how much you dismiss them or ignore them or move them into the quiet back corners of your mind, can come in handy every now and then. Sometimes, the things you want to forget can lead to the moments you'll always remember.
"There have been a lot of fun times, but this one is very special," Steve Alford said. "Because of last year."
"87-77," Bryce Alford said. "Yeah, I think we kept it pretty competitive."